61 comments:

Raketu's site looks great! Really entertaining! The old site was so confusing - couldn't tell what Raketu was or what it did - The animations make it clear and fun! Here's hoping they make piles of money now that people can see what they're selling!

I used to watch Ren and Stimpy when I was growing up and the first time I saw it, I decided that's what I wanted to do with my life. Ever since I was about 2 or 4 years old, I've been improving my art. By age 8 I picked up animation with a GIF program. I moved on to flash at age 10 and now I'm improving every day. I'm 17 right now and I guess the point of telling you this is to let you know that you were the spark to my fire. I really enjoy reading your blogs and one day hope to become one of the greats like you. Keep on doing what you do, and work hard at it!

These turned out great! I especially love the the George and Sody spots. That Chucky guy from the other post jumped the gun on his lip sync assessment. I think Sodys lip movement works well for what she's saying and for the fact that she's a fun. cartoony character.

Congratulations!!! Superb ads, really entertaining and clear in their message. I hope you'll continue to make more of them. Has anybody from Raketu offered you to make design of the user interface, or skin for their software?

Huge improvement over the old site. The animations are great, and Brian's inking looks fantastic. I too have an issue with the voices, or rather the audio, which has way too much echo. Sounds very tinny in a couple of the animations, particularly the latest one, which doesn't fit with the great looking visuals. Other than that, it's a winner.

oh that's weird... the first time i watched the sody and talking phone ads, it was really zoomed in, so that i could only see parts of the animated characters for the first maybe 5 seconds.. but upon rewatching them, it was framed so i could see everything just fine... AWESOME!

I ink everything with the brush tool in Illustrator. I've set up a couple of simple custom brushes. There's a brief tutorial on my blog. Hopefully Adobe upgrades the brush tool in Flash with the next release. Right now it sucks. The edges can get too rough and it doesn't react to pressure with the Wacom as well as the brush in Illustrator.

I'm not sure how the folks at Copernicus Studios inked most of the art on these pieces.

I'm notorious with my friends for always seeing your new cartoons the day that they're released. That being said, I LOVE them! It's so good to see George Liquor and Friends in new material! My favorite is Sody's, 'cause the timing is just perfect. I love the voices in all of them too! So alive, and happy acting! Great job to Michael, Katie, Kali, Marc and Eddie!

Those cartoons are HIGHLY phat, player! Please make a Sody Pop and Jimmy show.

These are great, especially the Sody one! Kali must have been pretty stoked to get to talk to Sody with Raketu in a commercial haha. This is the kind of thing that advertisment agencies should be jumping to do, it's not every day that I actually enjoy a commercial and end up feeling better about the product like I do with this, now they just need to come out with the OS X version of Raketu and I'll definetly give it a download.

awesome cartoon ads, john and crew! ... MAN i hope there is more George Liquor coming in the near future! i know everyone's drooling (and posibly other bodily fluids)over sody, but GL is my favorite! i miss jimmy... did they not want their product to be associated with a retard? it seems like he'd be a good pitch man, showing it's so easy to use, that even a frikkin retard could do it...

after seeing these i really wonder what's coming next from you.. it's been really awesome following your blog this past year and seeing you talk about what you're pitching and working on, and seeing what comes to fruition and how things turn out. maybe it's not "spumko" any more, but i'm sure the danes would still call it "Quality!"

p.s. on a side note, do you know if classico is on the new tenacious d dvd? and if not do you know where or when it might be released?

New York City's Flatiron Building, on 23rd Street, is a triangle. This shape made it very windy, which would blow ladies' skirts, revealing ankles, which in the early 20th Century, were seldom seen in public. Rascals would loiter around the Flatiron Building hoping for glimpses. Local constables, shooing such rogues away, were said to be giving them the "23 Skidoo."

I'm going to repeat what everybody already said, but anyway, I enjoyed the cartoons a lot! I also think the Sody Pop one is the best, but George Liquor's one is pretty neat too. I like the phone bill with devil atributes. It seems like a Donald Duck cartoon situation, which is also a greedy character that usually would be convinced by things like this. And Bobby is a funny character too, I wouldn't mind to see him again in other cartoons, though his haircut is too similar to Jimmy's. Is this guy created for the Rakety ad or did you already have this character in George Liquor's world? You finally did all type of crazy cut and movements in this one!

The other cartoon with the phone and the black woman is quite limited, but they have nice designs. Congrats to Brian Romero too!

I am glad that all that hard work for you is over or maybe I am a bit sad it is over. Either way the animation looks sharp with it's limitations meaning the layout looks good. Relax put your feet up and enjoy a martini. You and your team deserved it, cheers!

Great website! Wonderful cartoons! The look on Sody's face when she grasps Raketeena and thanks her - whoa, I've never seen that character look so demented! George Liquor is spectacular (So when are we gonna see the Raketu teevee ads?)Say, how is Michael Pataki doing?

The cartoons are great! I like the dailymotion Sody cartoon better because the animation isn't cropped like it is on the Raketu website. What's up with the comic word balloons? I want to see the whole frame ones!

Too damn cool! I love Sody's and George's expressions! Beautiful limited animation! I love the way Brian inked the phone guy and the chick! Bobby was friggin' hilarious! Raketu is lucky to have those characters! I've been dying to see Sody and George animated again!

When I get home, I'm going to download the latest version of Raketu (I have the original version) and experiment with it some more.

From a "business perspective", their web site redesign and the ads that they're using featuring your artwork are aces. This will help them appeal to Joe User or Jane User.

I'm going to withhold my "technical perspective" opinion of Raketu until I download the latest version and try it. There were some things in the original version that they needed to improve in order to appeal to Joe User or Jane User.

Listen i love John K and hence why I followed the links to find this site - but my job is marketing and it kills me to see this. Yeah Raketu just got a ton of publicity for people like myself who had never heard of them - but weird stylized tits and ass and some fat geeks are not a valid branding mesage. In my not so humble opinion.

I worked as an art director and designer at a couple of big agencies in NYC for nearly 10 years. I don't see anything wrong with Raketu using Johns characters to try and reach their audience. My bet is they're aiming for younger users who will find these shorts entertaining and not offensive. In my experience marketers and focus groups only serve to water down concepts, perpetuate mediocrity and cripple original thinking.

What Brian R. said. I actually think these characters and their relation to Raketu is more realistic than most of the people we see in advertising. Mature people should identify with George's money problems, internet users should relate ,or ,at least, find Bobby funny and young girls and boys should identify with Sody's desire of having only one instant message service. I think they are functional, apart from being entertaining.